The First 60 Minutes of a PR Crisis: Step by Step

The first hour of a PR crisis is disproportionately influential. What happens in those 60 minutes sets the trajectory of the entire event: whether the organization is seen as responsive and credible, or as evasive and slow. Whether the story gets defined by your account or by someone else’s.

Most organizations lose the first hour not because they don’t know what to do, but because they spend it doing the wrong things: seeking approval from people who aren’t available, debating the seriousness of the situation rather than acting on it, or drafting a comprehensive statement when a brief holding statement would suffice.

Minutes 1-10: Verify, escalate, don’t publish

The first instinct when a crisis trigger hits – a reporter’s call, a viral social post, a complaint that’s gaining traction – is often to go public immediately. Resist it.

The first ten minutes are for verification. Confirm that the crisis trigger is real and significant. A single negative tweet does not require a crisis response. A regulatory inquiry, a media call from a major publication, or a customer incident with scale potential does.

Verify:

• What happened? Get the specific, factual description of the triggering event.
• How significant is it? Assess the actual or potential reach and impact.
• Who needs to know? Identify the crisis team members who need to be activated.

Then escalate. Call – don’t email – the crisis lead or their designated deputy. One call to one person, who then cascades to the team. If you spend the first ten minutes drafting a statement, you’ve built a response before you know what you’re responding to.

Minutes 10-20: Assemble the crisis team

The crisis team assembles – physically if possible, on a call if not – within 20 minutes of the trigger. The meeting is brief: five to ten minutes to align on what’s known, who’s doing what, and what the next action is.

The agenda for this first assembly:

1. What do we know? Facts only. No speculation.
2. What do we not know yet? Identify the critical information gaps.
3. What is the immediate action? One or two things that need to happen in the next 30 minutes.
4. Who speaks externally? Name the spokesperson now.
5. When is the next check-in? Set a time – usually 30 minutes later.

The first assembly is not the place for drafting statements, establishing cause, or developing the full response strategy. It is alignment on immediate next steps only.

Minutes 20-30: Issue the holding statement

A holding statement is the bridge between the moment the crisis breaks and the moment you have enough confirmed information to say something meaningful.

The holding statement does three things:

1. Acknowledges that something is happening
2. Signals that the organization is responding
3. Gives a specific time by which more information will be available

Keep it short – three to five sentences. Not an apology (unless the facts clearly require one). Not a denial (unless confirmed facts support one). Rather, an acknowledgment of the situation and a commitment to communicate more as information becomes available.

Example for a product safety issue: “We have received reports of [specific issue] and are investigating urgently. The safety of our customers is our immediate priority. We will provide an update by [specific time] with confirmed information about what happened and what steps we are taking. If you have questions, contact [name] at [contact].”

The holding statement goes out through whatever channel the crisis first broke on. On social media, post there directly. For a media inquiry, call back with the holding statement. With a customer complaint, respond to that customer directly using the holding statement as the basis.

Minutes 30-45: Establish the monitoring watch

Once the holding statement is out, the monitoring lead establishes a continuous watch:

• Social media: Searches for the company name, product name, key individuals, and the crisis-specific keywords. Note the volume, sentiment, and who’s driving the conversation.
• News: Check Google News, relevant industry news aggregators, and direct outreach from journalists. Track any publication that has contacted you or is covering the story.
• Internal channels: What are employees saying? An internal forum or Slack channel surfacing concerns early is important information.

The monitoring output feeds the crisis team every 15 to 20 minutes. Short summaries: what’s being said, by whom, at what volume.

Minutes 45-60: Draft the first substantive statement

By minute 45, the goal is to have a clearer picture of what happened based on internal investigation. The first substantive statement – which may replace the holding statement if facts are confirmed – addresses:

• What specifically happened (confirmed facts only, no speculation)
• Who is affected and how
• What the organization is doing immediately
• What the organization is committing to in the next 24 to 48 hours
• A contact point for questions

The substantive statement is reviewed by the crisis lead and legal liaison before publication. The legal review needs to happen in real time – not the standard review cycle. If legal review takes 24 hours, the statement is useless in a first-hour context.

Typical statement length: 150 to 300 words. Enough to be substantive, short enough to be readable under pressure. This is not a press release – it is a crisis response communication.

What kills the first-hour response

These are the most common first-hour failures, in order of frequency:

Seeking too many approvals. A four-person approval chain on a holding statement in a crisis is a design flaw in the crisis plan. Pre-approve the holding statement and the approval path for the substantive statement before a crisis happens.

Trying to determine cause before responding. “We need to know what happened before we say anything” is understandable but wrong as a sequencing decision. The holding statement does not require you to know the cause. It requires you to acknowledge the situation and commit to communicating.

Drafting the wrong document. The first-hour need is a holding statement and then a short substantive update. Writing a long press release, preparing a FAQ, or drafting a full apology before facts are confirmed wastes the most critical window.

Delegating to the wrong level. The spokesperson and the crisis lead need to be senior enough that their involvement signals appropriate seriousness. A first-hour response delivered by a junior communications staffer communicates that the organization isn’t taking this seriously.

Going dark on owned channels. Silence on your own social media, website, and press contact during an active crisis is visible. Stakeholders watching your silence conclude you’re hiding. The holding statement prevents this.

After the first hour

The first-hour response sets the trajectory, but the work continues. Every 30 to 60 minutes, the crisis team checks in: what’s changed in the monitoring, what new facts have emerged, does the statement need updating.

The goal in the second and third hour is to shift from reactive to proactive: getting ahead of the narrative with confirmed facts, reaching out to affected stakeholders directly before they reach you, and coordinating with legal and regulatory contacts if required.

For the full crisis communication planning framework that makes this hour-by-hour execution possible, see crisis communication plan. For the longer-term issue of managing ongoing negative coverage after the initial crisis passes, see how to handle negative press coverage.